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Rh was a integral part of the whole: it guarded a line; it made a nucleus for a mighty tract of country. But few people passed that line—few came on to it from the country. It was there as a warning and a promise, but it had few chances of fulfilling either.

When the winter wood was drawn and cut; when the walls, were muddied-up, and the sleds overhauled, and a few more necessary things done, work was at a dead-lock—until something happened. And things did not often happen at Split Lake. The other men accepted the stagnation contentedly enough. They slept a good deal, they smoked, and they played cards; and, according to Cordy's assertion, they "pegged along very comfortably." But for Slicker with his young high heart and his aspirations the life was purgatory. He puckered his brows, looking at the men with a kind of hate. He was so tired of them: of little Hopper, the Sergeant, morose and nervous and with a curious dread of being left alone; of the dull, stupid Smith, with his limited, coarse thoughts; even of Cordy, the light-hearted gentleman who was his one friend and who was always full of laughing regrets that he could not cease to dress and move like a man of the London Clubs. Slicker wondered idly why Cordy had ever come away from them; why he didn't go back. And then, suddenly, he saw Hopper, the nervous little Sergeant, who was playing on Cordy's right, thrust his chair back and stand up.

"I've had enough," he said, in that uncertainly defiant voice of his. "There's some kinds of luck a man can't play against."

Smith looked up with a whistle of amaze, but the man on Cordy's left sat still. If Hopper was his host, so was Cordy. Cordy swept up the cards.

"Perhaps you'll have better luck next time," he said pleasantly.

"There won't be a next time." Hopper gripped the chair-back fiercely, and Slicker came forward in a hurry. He felt as though the hinted accusation had been flung at himself. But Cordy was untroubled. He lifted his eye-brows.

"Just as you like, of course," he said. "Hallo, Slicker, you take a hand?"